Diana Mitchell
by F3ARS0M3
Summary: The Courier is hell bent on finding the man who shot her and goes on a warpath to get some answers all the while memories of her past haunt her every step along the way. Rated M for language and violence.


**AN: Here's another attempt to write a story while trying to kick my habit of stopping my projects in their infancy. This latest work is me trying to do something different that what I'd normally do. My goal is to post a new chapter every week or so, most likely on the weekend. Rates, reviews and criticism are all appreciated. **

And so here I was, standing over the man who'd tried to and failed twice to kill me. He had that innocent puppy dog grin on his face that said he knew he'd fucked up but he shouldn't be punished regardless. I had to give him credit, it sure was a cute show and on someone younger than me, it probably would have worked plus, I was being simultaneously stared down and leered at by more than a half dozen men twice my size with mechanical gauntlets that would easily turn me into a nice, red paste. I was less than human to these bigots but the only thing that stopped them from stripping me of everything I owned and throwing me with the other slaves was the fact that their god-king leader Caesar- or Kai-Sahr, depending on what side of the Colorado River you were on- respected me. It was undoubtedly unheard of in the Legion to have a woman seen as possibly an equal and it gave most Legionnaires pause when they looked at me.

Getting back to the matter at hand, I'd done a few errands here and there for the Legion to test the waters with them and now Caesar saw fit to finally let me decide this man's, Benny's, fate. I'd had every reason I could think of to kill him. I'd killed others who'd tried similar things before without hesitation but there was something different this time. The ridiculous lawnmower blade machete Caesar had given to me to finish Benny with weighed heavily in my hands. The urge to kill him here and now was undoubtedly strong and justified but there was a certain something in his eyes. That twinkle that said, "Trust me, this isn't the way it's supposed to be. Just let me go and I'll take you for a ride on the real gravy train."

I raised the blade…

* * *

Life has a funny way of giving and taking, usually with more taking than giving in a way that's funny as in it's a joke everyone gets but you. Everyone gets a slice of that bitter pie, some moreso than others. I've taken my licks like everyone else and I figure I have a few more ahead of me and with the way I've dealt with them so far, I'll more than likely end up as just another faceless casualty consumed by the wastes.

But that's beside the point.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that life comes at you in different ways and everyone copes in their own way. The depraved souls on The Strip are content to ignore the hellhole outside their walls with booze, drugs and gambling until the city sucks them dry and casts them out into the slums of Freeside. The tribals in the outerlaying areas create their little gods and taboos to live their lives in innocent ignorance until they're wiped out by a roving gang of raiders or are inducted into Caesar's Legion. Then you have the regular Joes that make up the 'normal' people that you have today; the people that try to scrape by day to day in their little corrugated towns built on the ruins of a dead age. Those who try to create a little haven to feel safe in, if only for a little while until a lost soul bent on destruction comes by to snuff them out. As for me, I take things as they come. One bullet at a time, one bottle of scotch at a time and one more near overdose of Med-X at a time. It's not a pretty picture but it is what it is and you either learn to hack it out there or you get eaten up by one of the many demons that roam the wastes preying on the weak and being preyed upon by other, bigger demons.

And so these roads that people take lead them to other paths that they must continue taking; each one with a price to pay- a toll, if you will- for taking that path. My path led me to mercenary work. Being a gun-for-hire isn't all that bad actually. You get a payment of caps at the beginning of the job as an entry stipend then another at the end once the job is done, provided your employer was still alive. All for standing around with a gun and looking tough enough so that some asshole with a gun doesn't come along and decide to barter with bullets. There's the occasional fight with a drugged up raider gang or two but they're usually strung too far out of their minds to really fight effectively.

There are other jobs, of course, other than playing body guard for caravans. I've taken a few hits for some real pieces of work that had done some really fucked up shit to warrant a hefty bounty. I'm not a fan of being a dime store angel of death for chump change but booze doesn't pay for itself. There's always courier work too. It's usually simple enough, just get a package to deliver to a recipient and get a handful of caps for the trouble. I've never had much trouble on these jobs but of course my perfect track record had to have its say and next thing I knew, some pretty boy joker high on the Vegas lifestyle had me bound and staring into my own grave for carrying a fancy platinum chip.

As I stared into the shallow hole that was going to be my resting place for the next few hundred years or so, I had a sudden stirring within me. It just felt wrong to die at the hands of a guy with more grease in his words than in his hair in the middle of God damned nowhere after all the shit I went through. I felt a desire that I hadn't felt in years. The will to live was suddenly so strong that the nine millimeter bullet he put in my skull wasn't enough to keep me down.

When I woke up a few days later, I was sure I was in Hell but instead of a guy with horns, red skin and a really big fork standing over me, I met Doc Mitchell. He was a kindly old guy that had lived his life out comfortably as the resident physician for a little side of the road town called Goodsprings. It was a decent enough place to shake the dust from your boots and forget the past few days with a bottle or two of liquor in the local saloon but anyone'd probably miss it if they blinked while passing by. That seemed to suit the residents just fine but trouble had stumbled into town with a guy named Ringo.

Ringo was a nice enough guy if you thought a guy who'd point a gun at you one moment then apologize by offering a game of Caravan the next was a nice guy but I guess we can't be picky with our temperaments these days when you never know who'd shoot you just as soon as he'd said howdy. Anyway, turns out he'd pissed off the local convict escapees of the NCR Correctional Facility who were ready to kick down the doors of the Goodspringers. Before I knew it, I was right back in the saddle of mercenary work rounding up a militia of poorly equipped post-apocalyptical homesteaders to fight off a bunch of angry jail-broken prisoners with dynamite. Needless say, I wound up being the one doing most of the heavy lifting.

The man in the checkered suit, Benny, who'd shot me had a couple of tough guys with him that'd most likely stripped me of most of my weapons and armor; leaving me with a pair of nine millimeter pistols, a machete and my skivvies. Needless to say, I was terribly underequipped but I managed to convince the local general store owner to part with a suit of leather armor under the threat of possibility that me being dead and no one to protect his shop would be very detrimental to his business. I was also able to get a few others to spare extra supplies for the upcoming battle; a few sticks of dynamite here and there for our motley crew of militiamen and a rifle or two for them. I'd considered taking a rifle myself but I decided to stick with my pistols so that I could lay down rapid fire if I needed.

Actually fighting the renegade jailbirds was easier than expected. I was expecting a score of pissed off cons wearing flak jackets and fully automatic weapons but all they had were their prison uniforms, single shot shotguns and a few cheap pistols. A few well placed shots were all it took to drop the chumps. Once the dust settled, the last of the Powder Gangers, as they liked to call themselves, had considerably more holes in them than they started out with. I collected my blood money from Ringo and hit the road in the direction of the man in the Benny.

It felt good to be on the road again even if at the end of said road was probably going to end with me repaying Benny the favor of a bullet in the brainpan. Still, a purpose was a purpose which is better than spending the last five years at every roadside dive bar drowning in the bottom of a glass of whiskey. I finally had a sense of moving forward even if I was still making it with a bottle of liquor as my companion. Despite the fact that I'd taken a bullet to the brain, my memories were no worse for wear, for what that's worth.

The road south to an amusement park turned town named Primm was surprisingly brief. A few stray geckos served as target practice along the way even after I'd had a couple nips of whiskey in me. I had a special talent for staying somewhat lucid after the first few drinks. Med-X, on the other hand, had a funny habit of giving me the shakes as the dopamine wore off. There was an NCR encampment on the other side of the highway but something had seemed wrong. Soldiers had set up sandbags and other barricades facing the town itself rather than the roads. Obviously something was wrong but the soldiers didn't seem to be preparing to do anything other than watching the roads and town. Sure enough, the first guy I ran into told me that some escaped convicts had recently moved in to terrorize the locals.

I wasn't in the mood for more chumps that were slaves to their baser instincts but I needed more information on Benny so I decided to play the gung-ho cowgirl. There were roughly a half a dozen on the streets and another couple walking along the derelict roller coaster. They were armed with slightly better weapons and armor than the Powder Gangers but not by much, taking them down was easy enough and they were even kind enough to use nine millimeter pistols too so replacement parts and ammo were plentiful.

Turns out the residents of Primm were held up in the Vikki and Vance casino and Johnston Nash, my employer at the Mojave Express, seemed to be trying to manage everyone under the circumstances. I asked him what he knew about Benny and all he could tell me was that he heard that they were heading toward Novac through Nipton. As it was, I could have left right then and there to give chase, God knew I'd lost time recovering from the gunshot and he was getting further away but I couldn't just leave these people at the hands of some lowlifes with guns and bad attitudes. Besides, Nash had done right by me when I worked for him; he was fair and even handed in his dealings and being an employee of his granted a discount at his store.

So as I strolled in through the front doors of the Buffalo Bill Casino like some bad parody of a western gunslinger, I was greeted by more poorly armed convicts. The first few guys were easy enough but once I got to the main gambling room, I found myself on the receiving end of an incinerator. When I first walked into that room high on combat and confident they were easy targets, I damn near lost my head to a fireball. A lucky or well placed shot managed to cut his fuel lines and set him on fire letting me walk away only slightly singed instead of well done. I headed into the kitchen to finish mopping up the rest of these assholes when I found Primm's deputy tied up and just as soon as I'd cut him loose, he took off. Not that I blamed him for disliking the prospect of fighting a couple dozen pissed off guys with guns but an extra hand would have helped. Dwelling on the cowardice of one guy wasn't going to get me anywhere so I headed upstairs to deal with the rest of the cons. One smartass thought of laying a trap for me with a lit stick of dynamite around the corner but he didn't count on me kicking it back through the doorway and blowing him and his buddy up. Aside from that, I managed to walk away from the casino with a couple first degree burns, a shallow cut across my navel and more ammo and explosives than I walked in there. All in all, it worked out better than I'd expected.

Johnston Nash thanked me as I walked back into the Vikki and Vance Casino for clearing out the town and freeing their deputy but their sheriff and his wife had been killed when the convicts tried to move in. I was hardly a fit for law work and Deputy Beagle was too chicken shit to risk his neck in anything so it was up to me to find them a new lawman. Even so, I still had business of my own with Benny. You could hardly say I was hot on his trail but I didn't want him to slip away with no sign of hide or hair from him but it'd just be one more thing to weigh on my mind if I left these people at the mercy of any chump with a gun. I walked outside the casino and stepped onto the highway once again. I looked toward the north, the way I'd came, where the NCR Correctional Facility lie. There was supposedly an ex-sheriff who was doing time there before the recent jailbreak but I figured I didn't have a good reputation among the rest of the Powder Gangers that might have caught wind of the fact I'd gunned down Joe Cobb and his crew. I'd most likely have to shoot my way inside and hope that this ex-sheriff wouldn't catch any of the crossfire. I sighed and started walking, cursing my luck as I went.


End file.
